As he grew stronger in those days since the recovery of his senses he had striven to reach the window and look out. But he had never been able to do so. The little window was fully eight feet above the floor and he had nothing to mount upon to grip its ledge. Time after time he ran at it and sprang in the air, but in his weakened condition he always fell too short.
So he gave it up as hopeless. Escape, he realised, was quite impossible. Yet where he was held captive he knew not. His enemies had taken all precautions. They were determined to hold him prisoner, apparently to gain time.
Why?
One day he had slept heavily all the morning, probably snoring, as he knew he did, when he was awakened by a movement near him. He opened his eyes stealthily but made no sign.
Before him, moving across the room, he saw the dim figure of a man in respectable black who carried in his hand a plate containing food.
Suddenly the beam of light from the high window lit up his janitor’s face, and in an instant he recognised it as the countenance of a man he had seen in his dreams while he had been held prisoner at Willowden—it was, in fact, the old criminal who posed as Gray’s butler—the man Claribut.
For a few seconds Roddy watched, and then with a sudden effort he sprang up and threw himself upon the fellow at a second when his back was turned.
“What the devil do you mean by keeping me here!” he demanded, as he threw his arms around the man’s neck and attempted to throw him to the ground.
Claribut, taken entirely off his guard, tried to throw off his assailant, uttering a fierce imprecation the while, but the pair were Locked in a deadly embrace. Roddy, though young and athletic, was still too weak to overcome the old man’s defence.
Around the narrow stone walls they reeled. The door stood open, and Roddy, with a frantic effort, tried to force Claribut towards it, but the old criminal, who had been very athletic in his time, always prevented him.